Emergency service workers and volunteers fear their mental health is not being adequately monitored after attending traumatic jobs, due to a lack of funding and staffing within the Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) service.

Key points:

Emergency Service workers and volunteers say there are issues with the way CISM operates

Recommendations from a recent review into CISM are being implemented by DPFEM

There are also calls for a full-time psychologist for Ambulance Tasmania and the Tasmania Fire Service

For 10 years, Lauren Hepher has worked as a Ambulance Tasmania intensive care paramedic, but despite the vast number of traumatic incidents she had attended, she said she had not encountered CISM many times.

"They haven't been negative experiences, but I think the prevalence of mental health injuries and the types of exposures that we have, particularly as paramedics, means that we need something a lot more robust than what CISM can offer," she said.

According to the Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management, the CISM service is made up of 70 career emergency services personnel who are released from duty to volunteer with the program.

Notifications of a traumatic job are made through the Police Radio Dispatch Service, Ambulance Tasmania State Operations Centre, Tasmania Fire Service Communications Centre or via a 24-hour self-referral line.

But Ms Hepher said she knew of instances where calls were never made to paramedics or volunteers to check on their mental health after a traumatic event.

She said that was because there were not enough peer support workers in CISM to manage every person in need of assistance.

"You could very easily fall through the cracks, because everybody is too busy to flag your case," she said.

Ms Hepher added that there were many inconsistencies with the service, including how a high-risk job was defined, because a traumatic event was often a "unique experience".

"What might be a traumatic event for me may not be something that someone else would think was a critical event or a traumatic event," she said.

Ms Hepher said she once faced a confronting situation, when she attended the death of an elderly man just days after her own grandfather had died.

"I found that was quite a traumatic experience to be dealing with another family who had that same grief that I was still trying to process," she said.

"That would never be a flagged event by the system because no-one would have known that my granddad had just died."

'Room for improvements' says firefighter

Darren Gye is a firefighter with the Tasmania Fire Service and has volunteered as a peer support worker with CISM for the past 15 years.

Mr Gye said there was a growing acceptance among frontline workers to admit when they were struggling with their mental health.

"There is a lot of flexibility in the assistance we provide, and it is really geared around empowering emergency service workers to make choices about what they want to do with their own mental health," he said.

"It's not about telling them what to do, it's about having a conversation."

CISM service 'hit and miss'

President of the Police Association of Tasmania, Colin Riley, said police officers were experiencing similar problems with CISM.

"What we've found is, it's a good service but it can be a little bit hit and miss in that sometimes contact will be made by the CISM peer for traumatic events and then other times, there may not be contact made," he said.

"We've had frontline police officers that would be going through traumatic incidents and scenes and dealing with emotionally charged situations, or even quite violent situations, that wouldn't be contacted."

There are also calls for the Government to fund a full-time psychologist for each emergency service, separate to the CISM program.

"One of the key recommendations was that emergency services have a psychologist embedded within their service, not four or five different referral pathways that could see you end up at a psychologist if someone else deemed that you needed one," she said.

"The rigmarole of having to go and find a GP, explain to them your story, get a referral to go and see a psychologist … you might be waiting for weeks to get an appointment in the public system."

Vice President of the United Firefighters Union Tasmania branch Leigh Hills has also called for a dedicated psychologist for firefighters.

"Whilst DPFEM has a full-time psychologist their main focus is on police members," he said. "The UFU would welcome a dedicated full-time psychologist for firefighters separate from the CISM program."

Mr Hills called for the State Government to increase its funding for CISM.

"Whilst the $6 million provided by the Government to improve the physical and mental health of emergency services worker is welcome, none of it was allocated towards the CISM program," he said.

He added the CISM program had not received any "meaningful increase" in its budget, despite a 300 per cent rise in the number of emergency services workers using the service in the last 10 years.

'Highest priority': Government

In a statement, a spokesperson said the Government was investing $6 million in Tasmania's "first-ever proactive and preventative health and wellbeing program, which supports both the physical and mental health of our emergency services personnel".